A headline on a Bloomberg story written specifically to garner page views offer a prime example of how sloppy reporting and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) manipulation can converge to generate a veritable rumor storm in the Mac blogosphere.

[ad#Google Adsense 300x250 in story]In their Bloomberg article, Naoko Fujimura and Yoshinori Eki explain that fund manager Masamitsu Ohki suggested in a note sent to investors that Nintendo should consider bringing its popular games and properties to the smartphone market.

“Nintendo should try to either buy its way into this platform or develop something totally new,” Ohki is quoted as saying in the Bloomberg report.

“He declined to identify his holdings or to name any companies that Kyoto, Japan-based Nintendo should consider as acquisition targets,” notes the report.

Never once is Ohki quotes as saying that Nintendo should bring its software to the iPhone or iOS, but an overzealous headline exclaims, “Mario Shunning IPhones [sic] Leads to Growing Discontent by Nintendo’s Investors.”

The only other “investor” cited in the article is MF Global FXA Securities Ltd., which suggested to investors in July to sell stock in Nintendo after the company denied that it’s bringing software to the iPhone.

The Pokemon Co., a separately-held organization, is developing an iPhone rhythm game based on Pokemon – but Nintendo refuted suggestions that it is bringing its own properties to the iPhone or any other non-Nintendo platform. Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata has made it clear that’s not on his agenda for as long as he controls the business.

Make no mistake – Bloomberg’s headline for this article was carefully crafted to draw as many eyes to it as possible. Putting “Nintendo” and “iPhone” in the same headline is bound to draw a large number of eyes to the story.

But that’s apparently as far as some in the Mac blogosphere were willing to read.

I’m sure there will be more before the end of the day, but that’s all the effort I want to make for this. It’s been debunked. This is how rumors get started on the Web. It’s ugly, it’s sloppy, and it’s not news.

And, of course, there’s Cult of Mac at the front of the line. You can set your watch by it.

Peter Cohen

More specifically, John Brownlee, who leads the pack at Cult of Mac for this sort of thing.

https://twitter.com/#!/danielhedlund Daniel Hedlund

It’s a shame when link baiting happens in general, but especially when the topic is Nintendo games on iOS simply because such a discussion would actually be fun to read and participate in. A speculative piece on that topic would have been more interesting than the false reports.

Gustav

That said, the last to Zelda DS games were mostly controlled by a stylus. Just sayin’

Gustav

*two

http://mangochut.net/ mangochutney

Thanks for the clarification and debunking. I didn’t have time to really dig into this.

That said, selfish as I am, I’d love to see Nintendo games on the iPhone, probably with a dedicated hardware controller add-on for the iPhone/iPod Touch.

Should Nintendo ever consider this, you know that they’re on the verge of dying, because making their games available outside their own golden cage would kill their hardware business.

I think the chances of Nintendo licensing their games to Apple are as high as Apple licensing any of their OSes to other OEMs.

Anonymous

Ohmygosh I’d pay $30 no questions asked for Kirby Air Ride Touch, optimized for the retina display/dual-core A5 chip in the iPhone 5.

http://twitter.com/Moeskido Moeskido

Watching the disintegration of a casual comment into a full-blown squee riot is not unlike observing time-lapse video of maggots consuming a dog carcass.

Cult of Hacks. When your custom linkbait absolutely has to reek of fertilizer.™